Posts Tagged ‘CSA’

Since it’s winter, now is the time for farmers and the communities who support them to organize. If you live in New York City and are thinking about joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Just Food is hosting a wonderful (I went last year) conference on Saturday, March 5, from 8:30am – 6:30pm at the Food and Finace High School, 525 West 50th Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues), NYC. You can register for the conference at Just Food.

Wassaic Community Farm located in Wassaic, New York is a third year small farm project with a mission to address food justice issues in the South Bronx and locally in Wassaic. We have a quarter acre raised bed garden and a 3 acre plot within walking distance of a train line to NYC. We grown mixed vegetables and herbs using organic and permaculture techniques. We run a farmers market out of Padre Plaza, a community garden in the Bronx. This year, we are offering a Weekly Share CSA program, as well as developing an educational program for youth. You may contact us through benature@onebox.com or betseymccall@gmail.com to learn more about all of our programs.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was interested in embarking on a composting journey of sorts. Well, let me tell you, it has begun and composting at home is fun. Two weeks ago, I picked up a two and a half gallon composting bucket at the Red Hook Community farm. The suggested donation for a bucket of that size is a mere $4.00. They do offer a larger size bucket for a suggested donation of $7.00. Since it is just Jonathan and me, I thought the two and a half gallon bucket would suffice.

Transporting my bucket home that day on my bike required just a little bit of improvisation. I thought riding home with the bucket on the bike handle seemed like a likely enough solution, but then the lid fell off and I had to stop mid traffic and pick it up. Then, I decided to stop at the ball fields for lunch and thought it wise to lock up my composting bucket to my bike. Not sure why anyone would want to take such a thing, but then again, I didn’t want to lose that deposit!

my compost bucket

Once home, I thought about the best possible location for the bucket. Turns out, right outside my back door is the most convenient spot. I just open my back door and there it is. I am lucky enough to have the benefit of an outdoor space in Brooklyn so I think it goes without saying that having an outdoor space to keep your compost bucket makes the most sense.

When I told my friends that I was composting at home, most of them replied first with a look of horror which was then followed by “Ooo, isn’t that going to smell.” Well, luckily it doesn’t really smell that bad and it really only smells when I open the lid. What was fun about composting for the first few weeks was figuring out what I could reserve for the bucket while cooking dinner and then feeling a certain amount of accomplishment when I threw in egg shells, corn husks, coffee grounds, and the discarded and unwanted greens.

Biking back to the farm proved more of a challenge. Balancing a full bucket on my bike handle was a somewhat terrifying experience, but luckily this time the lid stayed on the whole time. Once I arrived at the farm, I took my bucket to the composting area, and with a little help figured out what to. I added my bucket’s contents to the open tumbler and then added double the amount of sawdust, closed up the tumbler, and proceed to turn the tumbler a few times. I rinsed out my bucket and brought it home to start the process again. Composting is cause for pausing to think about what I am throwing in the trash and really taking a look at what can go back into the earth. While biking my compost to and fro might not be the best idea, so far so good, and I’m looking to returning to the farm this Saturday.

If you are interested in composting and live in or near Red Hook, Brooklyn, you can visit the Red Hook Community Farm to learn more. The farm is open for volunteers who want to help out on Saturdays. Just show up and I’m sure there will be weeding, composting, and not to mention shopping at the farmer’s market.

Okay, I hope to write more about this next weekend, but I did want to go ahead and write a little bit about my first day of working on the farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I just signed up for a work share which means if I work two hours every Saturday, then I get to take home a full share’s worth of vegetables, fruit, and eggs. A pretty rewarding amount of food for a few hours of work.

My day began at ten in the morning composting with Jeff and another volunteer. The other volunteer and I raked layers of compost materials, sawdust, and chicken manure in the compost pile. The smell was brutal and unrelenting and stuck with me for a full 24 hours. I think I was being hazed on my first day at the farm. I wasn’t ready to give up yet and even decided that the next Saturday I would bring home my own two and a half gallon compost bucket and give this composting thing a shot. I will just have to keep in mind to use food scraps like banana peels, orange rinds, egg shells, coffee grinds, and the like.

After composting (which I actually really enjoyed except for the smell), it was off to weeding with a few other volunteers. Once I got started pulling weeds on a row of collard greens and kale, it was tough to stop, and I stuck it out the whole way down the row. It felt good to be in the dirt and working hard on the farm. If I had been paying attention, I might have noticed my t-shirt not meeting my shorts in the middle of the very hot summer day. I was too busy chatting and weeding and thinking about picking up my CSA bounty at the end of my shift.

At the end of the day, I took home my fabulous share of eggplant, beets, collard greens, corn, cherry tomatoes, basil, edamame, jalapenos, garlic, peaches, and apricots. (I also took home a nice strip of sunburn on my back which I didn’t notice until hours later when I was too tired to care.) I’ll get to take home eggs next week.